GLBTQ: What Should I Read?

The Vinland Sheep (2004) Helen Shaklady

An adventure story, set between Autumn 1470 and Spring 1471, that centres around two families, one English, one Welsh. The attraction between Agnes and Gwyneth simmers next to the Wars of the Roses and the myriad excitements that voyages across the Atlantic generated.

Mistress Moderately Fair (1988) Katherine Sturtevant

In 17th century London’s theater district, muddy streets and stimulating coffee houses, a sensitive romance develops between two women Margaret Featherstone, a playwright, and Amy Dudley, a mysterious and talented actress. Beyond the challenge of maintaining their illicit relationship, the women grapple with the choice of fulfilling love or ambition.

Despite their intimacy, Amy does not reveal her troubled past to Margaretand her abrupt disappearance wounds her lover deeply. To assuage the pain, Margaret returns to “the strange, lonely world of invention” to write her finest play. The new work demands an exceptional actress, and both Cary and Margaret determine it must be Amy. The search for her moves rapidly toward the stunning and well-crafted denouement.

While England Sleeps (1995) David Leavitt

Set against the rise of fascism in 1930s Europe, While England Sleeps tells the story of a love affair between the aristocratic young British writer Brian Botsford, who thinks homosexuality is something he will outgrow, and Edward Phelan, a sensitive and idealistic working-class employee of the London Underground and a Communist party member. When the strains of class difference, sexual taboo, and Brian’s ambivalence impel Edward to volunteer to fight against Franco in Spain, Brian pursues him across Europe and into the violent chaos of war.

Love Town (2010) Michael Wikowski

Growing up queer in a communist state, queens Patricia and Lucretia spent the 70s and 80s underground, finding glamour in the squalor, strutting their stuff in parks and public toilets, seducing hard Soviet soldiers, preying on drunks, and seeing their friends die of AIDS. Today they’re about to hit Lovetown, a homo-haven, populated by a younger generation of emancipated gays, who are out and proud in their post-communist paradise: suntanned, sculpted and vigorously spending the pink euro. This is the story of the clash between old and new gays - the clapped out queens and the flashy fags - as they meet in a place where anything goes, but some things have also been lost.

Dead Horsemeat (2008) Dominique Mancotti

A group of school friends from the heady days of 1968 France take centre stage in this racy account of horse racing, public corruption, and criminal intent. Agathe Renourd and her protege Nicolas Berger are in charge of the communications network of a major European insurance consortium. Christian Deluc has become a council member at the Elysee Palace, and Amelie raises thoroughbreds. Now, in 1989, their paths cross in an unexpected fashion as events begin to spiral out of control. Racehorses die under mysterious circumstances, unimaginable quantities of cocaine appear at Parisian parties, and the dashing Nicolas Berger meets a violent end when a bomb explodes in his car. The search for resolution produces a dark ride filled with political intrigue and mystery.

The Spectacle Salesman’s Family (2007) by Viola Roggenkamp

Paul Schiefer is a travelling spectacles salesman. Every Monday morning he leaves Hamburg on a week-long sales trip. His wife, his mother-in-law and his two teenage daughters Fania and Vera see him off with abundant hugs and kisses, and they welcome him back with equal exuberance on Friday evening - just in time for Sabbath eve. While her husband is away, Alma Schiefer defends the wellbeing of her family with an explosive mixture of ferocious love and extreme determination. Thirteen-year-old Fania is torn between the comfort of home and the fearful thrills of the unknown outside world, a sixties world that contains student protest, beehive hairdos, Israel and the Six Day War, politics, religion, revolution and …the promise of love. Sensual, funny and acerbic, The Spectacle Salesman’s Family is a brilliant, vivid portrait of Jewish life in post-Holocaust Germany that continues the Jewish tradition of memorialising, recounting the details in order to hold onto the past and its lessons.

The Back Passage (2006) by James Lear

A seaside village, an English country house, a family of wealthy eccentrics and their equally peculiar servants, a determined detective — all the ingredients are here for a cozy Agatha Christie-style whodunit. But wait — Edward “Mitch” Mitchell is no Hercule Poirot, and The Back Passage is no Murder of Roger Ackroyd. Mitch is a handsome, insatiable 22-year-old hunk who never lets a clue stand in the way of a steamy encounter, whether it’s with the local constabulary, the house secretary, or his school chum and fellow athlete Boy Morgan, who becomes his Watson when they’re not busy boffing each other. When Reg Walworth is found dead in a cabinet, Sir James Eagle has his servant Weeks immediately arrested as the killer. But Mitch’s observant eye pegs more plausible possibilities: polysexual chauffeur Hibbert, queenly pervert Leonard Eagle, missing scion Rex, sadistic copper Kennington, even Sir James Eagle himself. Blackmail, police corruption, a dizzying network of spyholes and secret passages, watersports, and a nonstop queer orgy backstairs and everyplace else mark this hilariously hard-core mystery

The Blood Spilt (2007) Asa Larsson

It’s midsummer in Sweden—when the light lingers through dawn and a long, isolating winter finally comes to an end. In this magical time, a brutal killer has chosen to strike. A female priest—who made enemies and acolytes in equal number—has been found hanging in her church. And a big-city lawyer quite acquainted with death enters the scene as police and parishioners try to pick up the pieces….

Not long ago, attorney Rebecka Martinsson had to kill three men in order to stop an eerily similar murder spree—one that also involved a priest. Now she is back in Kiruna, the region of her birth, while a determined policewoman gnaws on the case and people who loved or loathed the victim mourn or revel in her demise. The further Rebecka is drawn into the mystery—a mystery that will soon take another victim—the more the dead woman’s world clutches her: a world of hurt and healing, sin and sexuality, and, above all, of sacrifice.